Since the 1850s, legend has it, baseball has been known as The National Pastime.
This lofty status likely was assigned only because people back then still traveled by horse and buggy. The real National Pastime, after all, is driving. Or maybe sitting in traffic waiting to drive. Or maybe fantasizing about driving, about rolling along an open road with the top down and the wind blowing through your flowing hair. As mentioned, this is a fantasy — at least for some of us.
Anyway, as luck would have it, America’s erstwhile National Pastime and its current National Pastime have converged in the metropolis that is Portland. Because Portland — known to Clark County residents as That City Down South — right now rests at the confluence of a story about baseball and a story about driving.
In one, a group called the Portland Diamond Project is trying to bring a Major League Baseball team to the area. This is not a repeat from 1964 or 1996 or 2003 or 2007, all of which saw quickly forgotten efforts to bring big-league baseball to the city.
And it certainly is not a repeat from 2010, when Portland was unable to hold on to its Triple-A team, despite about a century of history in the city.
No, this is a brand new story, and the people behind it last week made offers on two possible locations for building a stadium. Whether or not you are a baseball fan, this is big news for the people of Clark County because what happens in Portland does not stay in Portland. Like it or not, we are culturally and economically tied to That City Down South.
Which is a roundabout way of getting to the true National Pastime — driving.
Swing for the fences
You see, the other big story out of Portland is the ongoing saga of the Portland Region Value Pricing Advisory Committee, which wants to charge you for driving on Interstate 5 and Interstate 205. You might have heard about this; considering that some 70,000 Clark County residents work in Oregon and that there are only two bridges between here and there, the prospect of adding tolls is kind of a big deal to us.
The Portland Region Value Pricing Advisory Committee was formed through a bill passed by the Oregon Legislature, and the premise is to create tolls in order to reduce congestion in the Portland area. Great idea; we’re all for reducing traffic in the parking lot that is Portland. But by instructing the committee to consider tolling plans on I-5 and I-205, the Legislature revealed its true goal.
If mitigating traffic were the primary concern, Oregon officials also would consider tolls along Interstate 405 through downtown Portland and on Highways 26 and 217 to the west of the city. Spread the wealth, as it were, or maybe spread the pain.
Oh, perhaps that is overly cynical. Perhaps it is simply a coincidence that the freeways primarily traveled by Washington residents just happen to be the ones where tolls are being considered. But the idea amounts to a wild pitch.
“Congestion pricing has a myriad of impacts and I think some is to change behavior and I think some is to incentivize people to look elsewhere to be more efficient,” committee co-chair Sean O’Hollaren said. Now this might just be me and my flowing hair, but it seems pretty easy to translate that as a desire to have Clark County residents begging for light rail on this side of the river.
And yet, we digress. You see, the idea of bringing Major League Baseball to Portland could be the thing that finally results in some solutions for the region’s traffic issues. One of the sites sought by organizers is just north of the Moda Center, which also is known as the place where I-5 traffic goes to stop. And building a 32,000-seat baseball stadium in the area might finally force Oregon officials to deal with a bottleneck that causes six-mile backups between there and the I-5 Bridge.
Combining these two thoughts probably is nothing more than a whiff. But when it comes to congestion throughout the area, we might as well swing for the fences.
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